YOUR CART

Scandinavia

I have to do the get up insanely early and try to get to Stansted thing again, so when the plane is delayed for an extra hour it is clearly of no consequence to me. Eventually we are cleared to go and are soon flying over about 1000 frozen lakes in Sweden – excellent: extreme cold is exactly what I want from a holiday, and it makes a delightful contrast to the heat of last week. Thankfully the lakes seem to melt as we get closer to the airport, which is a 1.5 hour bus ride to Stockholm (and why the hell is that – did the bus company build it that far away so they could charge more for the trip into town or something?) through Arena photo shoot country – that crystal clear light through pine trees thing that they seem to love this month.Even so, it doesn’t really feel like my kind of town. Lunch confirms it – the girl serving couldn’t be ruder to me when I tell her I don’t speak any Swedish. I consider telling her I only do real languages, but decide against it. Of course, it was only 2 days ago that I was in Croatia – just about anything would look bad in comparison. I try, and fail, to get out of town on the boat to Helsinki today and have to make do with a ticket for tomorrow, and then go to the reservation office to book a hotel room. This, it seems, is a big mistake, as the cheapest room they can find is 800kr plus booking fee (they do nothing for free in Sweden – in what is supposed to be a tourist information centre I ask for a map of the city and am told I can buy one – they clearly love tourists here). It seems pretty high for a single bed with shower (I’m afraid to ask if breakfast is included) but it gets worse – when I actually get to the hotel the room is the size of my bathroom at home, but without the bath. Or the room. Jail cells are better equipped than this room – at least they have a toilet (presumably because prisoners would riot if they had to share a bowl – I’m considering stirring up unrest with my fellow prisoners). When I explain to the woman on the front desk that I was told I’d have these facilities in my room she says in her high pitched, sing song accent “no, the room doesn’t have this”. Well duh – my eyes work too, but they are supposed to be there. She repeats herself, and all I can say is “oh, so the booking office lied then” and stomp away from her complete indifference.And in this markedly improved mood I return to the land of the blonde. It’s scary how many blonde people there are here, and that they’re still allowed to breed with each other – you’d think maybe they would want to broaden the gene pool a little. Still, someone has to take over the petty bureaucrat jobs, I guess. I check out the map and decide to go up to Gjurpark, as I figure a bit of nature will calm the frazzled nerves, but for some reason it is a load of buildings and a (closed) funfair. What’s with these people? They can’t even do a park properly! It’s really quite simple – get an area with grass and trees AND DON’T BUILD ON IT! How hard can it be?So as I’m in the area (and the buses seem to have stopped running) I go to a museum recommended by a friend as the one to see in Stockholm – the Vasamuseet. This is a museum for an old boat, and initially I was as keen to go as you are right now to read about it, but I’m actually glad I went – it is a massive boat which takes up the majority of the 7 storey structure, and as such is pretty impressive. A few points, though – this is a museum dedicated to a ship which, when built, was designed to be the pride of the Swedish fleet. This proud boat, which was years in construction, managed to sink crossing the harbour on the way to be filled with supplies – the flagship of one of the most powerful navies of the time didn’t even cross the harbour, let alone engage with the enemy (it should also be mentioned here that the enemy was Poland – ooh, scary). Then they promptly forgot where the thing was, and only found it 300 plus years later because they almost dumped a load of rocks on top of it. So obviously they then decided to spend millions to raise it, and then built a museum for it. And then another, more expensive museum (which I’m now paying for, of course). And now they have decided to completely refurbish it. Why? Have they declared war on Poland again and nobody thought to tell me? Are they planning to sail it to see if they get any further this time? Maybe they could make it all the way around the first bend - I’d pay to see that. Although, given that it’s in Sweden, paying money goes without saying.Speaking of which I exchange some more money (as I’m already out after all of 6 hours in town) and wave it around to see what happens – a couple of kids laugh at me, and their father sneers because his bar bill tonight will be more than that. Mine too, now that I think about it. I see the Viking line ship leaving (it’s a Finnish boat – no concern of that sinking) and wish I was on it – maybe I should have risked frostbite and sat on the deck given the lack of rooms. Then the sun sets, which is pretty damn beautiful actually, so as a punishment for actually enjoying something I head up to Gamla Stan (the old town – and I’d like to know why it’s not called Altes Stadt or something – at least I’d know where I stood then – stupid pretend language) to find a rollmop factory or something and get stung there. I don’t manage to find anything though, so in an act of complete perversity I go to Burger King – I know: I’m disappointed in myself too. So as a further punishment I make myself buy some beers – that’ll teach me.Not wanting to let an opportunity go by I start to write some notes, and a woman comes up and says “you’re writing” (they don’t miss a trick here) and tries to read what I’m writing over my shoulder. This is enormously annoying (imagine someone reading a book over your shoulder, then magnify that annoyance by ten times to get to the reading your writing stage), not to mention potentially perilous given the less than savoury things I’ve already written about the Swedish (I’ve toned it down some for public consumption). Luckily my handwriting is pretty bad (plus I’m left handed, so drag my hand across everything I write as I go), but this exchange depresses me, so I return to my jail cell.The next morning I wake up from a Children of the Corn dream and realise that I would rather swim home than stay here for another day. After I check out (breakfast wasn’t included, you’ll be surprised to learn) I take a sweet from the plate on the front desk – the girl behind the counter looks as if she wants to charge me for it, but I’ve already paid the bill and I smirk my way out. At somewhat of a loose end, and realising that I’ve only been to the 4 most central tube stations, I decide to get my moneys worth on my rail card and choose a random station towards the end of the line to see what it’s like – maybe they keep all of the dark haired freaks out there or something. I choose Bjorkhagen. Unfortunately she not home, although one look at the suburb from the station explains the delay on her new album – she’s too depressed to finish it. I swap to the other side of the platform, avoiding the weird spitting guy (and can I ask what the hell is the deal with all of these Europeans spitting all the time? Is it so hard to maybe swallow a little saliva from time to time rather than expectorating absolutely everything in their mouths?) and get the next train back. On the train I see a poster which says “Tog Passionen Slut? Kop en NY!” – I don’t know what this actually means, but it makes me feel positive about my forthcoming move to New York.I get back into town and see the Thief Museum listed on a map at the train station. This sounds intriguing (“yes for sure it is true – we used to have thieves in Sweden in the 16th century. Apparently they thought it was expensive to live here. They moved to Iceland, of course. This is what they looked like – don’t stand too close”), but it turns out to be miles out of town, and I’m not going back out into the badlands again. Shame though – I quite fancied stealing something from there.But it’s a nice day so I decide to walk through Gamla, stopping at a (admittedly) pretty cool café for a coffee and juice, and then on across the river and through a large square where everyone is sitting, drinking the sun in. Bizarrely I feel like shopping, so I head into the big department store (NK) across the road. This turns out to be a bad idea, of course, as I want to buy everything in the store, but given that I have no money, and would have to carry whatever I buy for another week, I don’t get anything. Although I’m strangely drawn to the idea of buying some Bjorn Borg underwear. The Swedes seem to be bang up to date on the fashion front though (this seasons hottest items are going to be white and made of raincoat material, in case you’re wondering).Out on the street I see a bus to Ikea, and it’s too ironic not to jump on (equally ironic was my desire to pick up a bottle of Absolut to bring with me – a coal to Newcastle kind of deal. The only thing that stopped me – and any of you who have been in an airport at 6.00 in the morning walking through duty free will probably sympathise – is that the earliness of the flight precluded any thoughts of alcoholic beverage purchases). And it is everything I had hoped for – a big barn on the edge of town with hordes of bored blonde people walking past any number of products with stupid names (the products, that is. Although the Swedes generally have stupid names too). I figured that here at least their product names would make sense to the locals, although oddly I notice quite a few Italian names – I guess there is someone in Ikea middle management whose job it is to confuse the customers. Then I walk around the industrial site while I wait for the bus back into town and look at all of the other barns, and I think about how right now I could really be anywhere in the world and this kind of place would look absolutely identical.Then I’ve got time to get back into town and buy the Borg underwear (and really, how could I not?), get on the bus to the boat terminal and join the seemingly never-ending queue to collect my room key and go to Helsinki. Eventually I get onboard and head down to my room to throw my bag in and then back upstairs. By the time I get up to the deck we’ve started moving, and already there are three (presumably Finnish) guys who are out cold, the empty contents of a case of beer strewn around them – that’s fast work.A Finnish joke – Mika and Keke meet in a bar having not seen each other for five years, and they start drinking. After a couple of hours Mika turns to Keke and says “so how are you?” then returns to his beer. A few more hours pass, and at last Keke turns to Mika and says “so are we here to babble, or are we here to drink?"”So what else is there to do but have a few beers? I decide to sample the various bars onboard – the ‘English style’ pub (a bar with a few dingy seats and gloomy atmosphere – so far so accurate – but they have far too many different beers here to be truly ‘English style’), the ‘dancehall’ room (lots of soft furnishings and lounge music – if I was with someone else I’d hang here just to be ironic, but irony falls flat when you’re on your own), then a steak dinner in the ‘American style’ restaurant (and if you’d been living in England for 3 years you’d be craving steak too) and back to the pub until the ‘entertainer’ arrives (full marks for honesty – he opened his set saying “hi I’m Steve, and I play guitar really badly, so if that will upset you then you should leave now”). I take my cue and go, but there is only the ‘casino’ (two blackjack tables and ice hockey on the televisions), or the disco.And, even now, I’m wondering if I should have left the disco alone – I mean, they had a sauna at the bottom of the boat – that might have been funny. But exposure to Steve left me feeling anything else could only be an improvement. Quite clearly, this didn’t take into account that it was karaoke night in the disco. You see, Finns and Swedes love karaoke, they really do, but unfortunately karaoke doesn't love them. In fact, on the evidence on show that night, karaoke loves Scandinavians like you would love someone who just ran over your dog. And then reversed, just to make sure. I have heard some bad singers in my time – hell, I’ve lived with some – but no one I have ever heard in my life sings quite as poorly as these guys in this state on this boat. By this time I’d had a few beers, and this normally allows me to be a little kinder to the ‘artistic endeavours’ of others, but these guys were just unbelievably, mind-blowingly crap. Think of the crappest singer you’ve ever heard, multiply that crapness level by ten, and you’re still not close. These guys were the oral equivalent of fingernails down a blackboard, and they explain why Steve had an audience downstairs.And then, just as I was considering suicide as a viable escape from this hell (and this after only 5 minutes), they stop and bring on the disco. And, despite the truly mediocre level of music on show (they actually played Tina Turner, and that was one of the better songs) I start smiling. Maybe I’m drunk, or maybe it’s just the end of the torture that makes me so happy. I grab another beer and start watching the show – there’s the chin stroking goatee guy who wants to be above it all but still wishes that a girl would come and talk to him, the ever expanding group at the table next to me who keep finding new people to say ‘hey’ to, and the guy who tries to pick up absolutely ever girl in the disco, only to be turned down flat every time. Chinstroker eventually talks to one girl, and even gets to dance with her, but just as I think he might have done it he strikes out. And I figure that it’s as good a time as any to beat a retreat, and I do.When I get back to my cabin there is a guy sprawled out in the other bed with empty beer cans around him, and I wonder if he’s left his mates on the deck – it must be chilly out there by now. He still manages to get up and go before I do in the morning, though. I notice his key is still in the room, and I let him back in after I return from breakfast with him babbling in Finnish to me, which even the “mate, I haven’t got a clue what you’re saying” speech fails to stop. And at that time I notice that his t shirt is torn and covered in mud, and given that we are on a boat this strikes me as a trifle odd. I hope that it’s mud, anyway, but obviously I don’t want to think about it too deeply…Helsinki is (do I really need to say this?) cold. But very cute – it looks like a kids storybook kind of town. And the people are really nice, which after Stockholm is quite a shock. The tourist bureau books me a room for the night, and doesn’t even tut me when I ask for a boat to Tallinn for tomorrow before I’ve even seen Helsinki. And the women working in here seem to be pretty cute.So I dump my bag at the hotel and start to roam the streets. If anyone asks what you can check out in Helsinki the answer is … not much, really. I head to the church (built mostly underground from rocks and brass, and everyone hated it when it was first built but loves it now – just like anything slightly different anywhere, really) and then over to Kiasma (a really cool building which is the modern art museum – the art is okay, but I can’t shake the feeling that anything of note from here would be shipped to somewhere else a bit bigger). Everywhere I walk I notice a strange noise coming from the cars, and eventually I realise that it’s the studs on their snowtires hitting the asphalt. Obviously this is a fairly odd concept for someone who lives somewhere where the weather is so mild. I realise this over lunch, where yet another gorgeous girl serves me, and I notice that all of the women here seem to be stunning, while all of the men seem to be truly ugly. To put this into context, Mika Hakkinen was considered quite a catch here even before he became a two time world champion multi-millionaire – this is probably why one of the biggest stars on Finnish television (okay – bear with me here) married him. Obviously Mika Salo slipped through the gene pool somehow, but any guys looking to meet some stunning looking women could do worse than to start brushing up on their Finnish.But what to do for the afternoon? I check the map and decide to stroll down to the flea market but it’s not there, so I walk instead to a nearby park which still has a small area of crunchy snow on the rise up to the empty building the local punks hang out at, all smoking furtively. So it’s a good day and I feel great, although a little bored. Walk down to the harbour and through the old market hall and see all of the excellent food there (and isn’t it amazing how many different ways the Scandinavians have to treat a herring?), then up to some big white building at the top of a lot of steep stairs (senate building? Some government ministry? A church? I should probably dig out my map of Helsinki to check…) and then, in the absence of anything else to do, I go to the movies. The Straight Story by David Lynch – very good, in case you were wondering.After a shower and change I check the What’s On in Helsinki (not much being the obvious answer) magazine to see where to go to, and I find that an artist’s restaurant (Kosmos) is just around the corner, but unfortunately for me it’s full of old folks. So I keep walking until I find Mother. This is more like it – lots of young people, a great atmosphere, good food and drink, and the DJ from Pepe Deluxe scratching up lounge music (honestly, those wacky Finns) in the corner. So they feed me and keep a stream of Hoegardens coming while I write at the bar. This is a great life – I could definitely get used to it – getting quite a bit of writing done while a lot of really cute girls come to talk to me about my writing (“are you writing a book?” “yes – it’s the story of a successful young writer who struggles with his fame and travels to unusual places to try to get away from it all…”). Shame I don’t speak Finnish, although everyone speaks English for me (and better than some people I know who have it as their only language).The next morning it is a shame to be leaving, as I definitely feel good in this town, but the nature of this trip is hurry up and move. I constantly feel that I am leaving before I arrive – probably the result of booking tickets out of town before I get to check the place out. I pack with the infomercials on, and I particularly enjoy Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley’s performances for Total Gym – they perform with a lack of sincerity unrivalled in the field of infomercial presentation. Watching these things reminds me of the old days when my flatmate and I used to watch them into the small hours and discuss our favourites the next day.As I walk down to the catamaran terminal it starts to lightly snow, and with one of my old tapes from years ago on my walkman it’s a great walk. Having a walkman on throws up some odd moments though – at one stage I was through customs and surrounded by a crowd of kindly looking Finns while Closer by NIN blasts out – those of you familiar with the song will understand just how strange a moment that was.And then a little over an hour later I’m in Tallinn. There seems little to say about it – I book a ticket for tomorrow’s ferry to Stockholm (obviously), and then walk through the rain and the grim, deserted streets from the terminal to the Hotel Viru, the tallest building in town by at least 50% and my new residence for the night. It’s also one of the best hotel rooms I’ve ever stayed in, which is remarkable considering a. the number of hotels I’ve stayed at b. the state of the lobby (which they are fixing at the time and which looks as though, quite literally, a bomb has gone off) and c. it’s in Tallinn.I go for a wander around the old town but can’t really work up much enthusiasm – it’s probably the most beautiful I’ve seen, but after 2 weeks of this I’m old towned out. Nothing really ever seems to happen in old towns either – they seem to exist purely for tourists. It is a really great one though, as I said. I figure I’ll go shopping for a while, but can’t work up any enthusiasm for it so I walk around for a while and, bizarrely, find a small gallery which is showing (and selling) some Picasso linoprints and pottery items – not the first thing you expect to find in Tallinn. I consider buying a really cool linoprint but (no surprise really) I can’t afford it – I guess these are for the new Russian mafia types with delusions of artistic appreciation. Get up the hill to where the local artists live guys – they’re all pretty good, and they need the money more than the estate of a dead Spanish woman beater.Tallinn does seem like a cool town, but I just can’t find where stuff happens at night here – disappointing after the last few weeks. There doesn’t seem to be a university here, so my usual plan won’t work. I have to resort to looking in Tallinn This Week, which isn’t a good sign. I go to Club Aveniii, which seemed to be the most likely place (outside of the local fetish club, of course – I wonder what the local fetish is?), but sadly it’s pretty crap – a bunch of small time hoods trying to pick up girls at the next table (who leave) and the waitresses (who clearly want to), all to the soundtrack of really bad late eighties music (Dire Straits still have some fans, it seems). I eat, have a few beers, write a few grim notes and slump out, disappointed, to my room.So the next day I have breakfast and check out and try to find something to do until the boat arrives. I wander around and try (unsuccessfully) to find the market mentioned in Tallinn This Week, although I have to keep going indoors to avoid freezing (I noticed that it actually got up to zero around lunchtime), and because the snow keeps flying into my eyes like dust in a windstorm. I end up walking to what is advertised as an Australian pub (The Lost Continent), and strangely it’s full of screaming children running around a bored looking woman dressed as a giant pink rabbit. I haven’t been to Australia for 3 years – clearly some things have changed since I was last there. When I ask the guy behind the bar why it’s an Australian pub he says because everyone else opens Irish bars. Oh, and because they have Fosters on tap. That’s quite unusual, obviously, so I have an Estonian beer and admire the (unusually small) roo skins on the wall, which are next to those yellow road signs with the fake bullet holes – it all conspires to make me feel quite homesick. Well, some sort of sick, anyway …I have one last walk around the old town and realise that I haven’t done it justice – it really is beautiful, especially the churches on the top of the hill, with all of the small laneways and stairs around them. And then I get on the boat, which is pretty crap compared to the first one – there are only 2 bars, both of which are pretty grim, and the disco, which has a really bad floorshow. I head down to my room to read, and even this isn’t too easy – it’s a tiny room right next to the engine on the very lowest level of the ship – not too much sleep here.The next day I have a chat with a nice guy in customs (he’s amused that I was born in a town called Parramatta, and he tells me about his trip to Australia years ago – I mention that the pubs have changed a lot since then) and then walk around Stockholm for a while – it’s pretty cold, but I’m used to that by now. I walk along Kungsgaten and over the frozen river (I look down and see footprints up to the edge of the ice under the bridge and wonder why there are none coming back) in search of a pub a friend mentioned to me, but to no avail. I do manage to find a good CD shop though, and pick up the Manu Chao album which I heard in Zagreb (which is fantastic), and then I go to see (at last) American Beauty, which reminds me that life truly is great. It makes me reflect on what an amazing couple of weeks I’ve just had, and that I have to try and capture the essence of them on paper, and all I can hope is that I do them justice. (May 2000)